Dusty and Sweets McGee

I think it was William Burroughs who said in a Paris Review interview that the reason he stopped being a junkie was that he was sitting around one day and suddenly realized that he wasn't doing anything. As in "bored to tears". Certainly that attitude is well conveyed in this film.

It's a documentary about dope addicts. shot in pleasant, clean settings and mostly middle close-ups. Occasionally, when showing the addicts injecting, it's extreme close-ups of the needle going into flesh, and sometimes, while they are high tight two-shots. Otherwise, it's everyone talking in vague terms, referring to the downside of their addiction querulously.

I found it dull. The people are not interesting, their opinions are poorly expressed, and the downside of the addiction is never really shown. It's more an inconvenience than anything else, like having to shop for toilet ppaer. Was there a sense that this sort of life was glamorous and this was intended as a corrective?

A young couple falls into heroin addiction in Hollywood. Various characters deal with this drug underworld. This starts with interviews with addicts and they look real. This has a pseudo-realism feel. I wouldn't be surprised if anybody is a real addict. There is some realistic drug use. It looks like there is some guerilla filmmaking here. Some of the camera work is either daringly experimental or poorly amateurish. I can't decide which. I don't recognize any of these actors and they're fine. The director is using long takes and the actors are trying their best. The plot meanders and lacks drama. The intensity can't build. It's an interesting outsider film although it's not great cinema. It has some interesting aspects.

Clifton, Nancy, and other miscellaneous characters, all born in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, relate their experiences growing up and using drugs and alcohol. some are straight, some are gay. from what i have read, some people actually were drug users, and some are just acting. the trivia section describes a lawsuit, trying to clarify who was what. we listen to people ramble on, with some everyday-life discussion, and lots of talk about sex and drug use. one issue is that much of the lighting is so dark, we can't see what's going on, or who's talking. annoying. it's very disjointed. just cuts to different scenes of different people talking. interesting that Ricky Nelson is listed as music director, but none of the songs are actually performed by him. pretty bleak, listening to all this. gotta think of it in context... this was 1971, just after woodstock, and the flower power age. Best part of this film is the music! Written and directed by Floyd Mutrux. I LOVED his other project Freebie and the Bean, with Alan Arkin, James Caan. more of an actual scripted story, it's SO much better. Mutrux seems to really capture the gritty city life. Find Freebie and the Bean.

Dusty and Sweets McGee is a plotless, episodic look at the days and nights of Los Angeles junkies circa 1971. This mournful, elegiac film is a truly unique entry in its genre, its cast of real life hopheads lending it a bittersweet tinge offset by a marvelous soundtrack of jaunty oldies. Blue Moon, Duke of Earl, The Loco-Motion...these were the songs these young people grew up listening to in happier, simpler times, and now they're the soundtrack of their rapidly disintegrating lives. There's even a perfectly selected Van Morrison tune, Into the Mystic, and a magnificent composition by the unfairly neglected Jake Holmes. The first and best film of director Floyd Mutrux's on again off again Hollywood career, Dusty and Sweets McGee is an amazing time capsule that all serious film fans should try to see.